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The Politics of Participatory Art

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Bell, D.M. (2015) The Politics of Participatory Art. Political Studies Review. ISSN

1478-9302

https://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12089

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The Politics of Participatory Art

The two books reviewed in this article engage with 'participatory art', in which artists mobilize people as the central medium of their work. Grant Kester's The One and the Many argues that such works have the potential to generate new communal forms that challenge neoliberal hegemony; whilst Claire Bishop argues that in dispensing with the negating praxis of the avant-garde they all too frequently end up reproducing its logics. Here, I suggest that if the binary that structures both their arguments is overcome a productive synthesis of their arguments can be made, although this still leaves unanswered a number of questions about the role that art might play in social change.

Bishop, Claire (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso Kester, Grant H. (2011) The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, Durham NC: Duke University Press

Keywords: art; ethics; aesthetics; collaboration; participation

In February 2006 the art historian Claire Bishop published 'The Social Turn: Collaboration and its

Discontents' in the magazine Artforum, in which she was highly critical of dominant trends in

'participatory art' practice and the discourses surrounding it. She argued that the field was marked

by the renunciation of aesthetic judgements in favour of a 'Christian' ethics of collaboration,

rendering it incapable of producing interesting art or making disruptive political statements. Among

the targets of her critique was fellow art historian Grant Kester, whose 2004 book Conversation

Pieces is a key text of this 'social turn'; and he responded with a letter, printed in Artforum's May

2006 issue. In it, he argued that 'Bishop seems determined to enforce a fixed and rigid boundary between "aesthetic" projects ("provocative," "uncomfortable," and "multilayered") and activist works

("predictable," "benevolent," and "ineffectual")', (22) rather than considering alternative

understandings of aesthetics that stem from ethically sound social practice in which the artist

facilitates the collaborative production of work. The May issue also included Bishop's response to

Kester's response, which argued that his 'righteous aversion to authorship can only lead to the end

of provocative art and thinking' (22).

These arguments form the basis for the two books reviewed here, which will be of interest to

scholars exploring alternative forms of political organisation; and to those interested in the

relationship between politics, ethics and aesthetics. Both books have been largely well-reviewed –

Kester's for opening participatory art criticism to new evaluative criteria (Cole, 2012; Smith, 2012;

Cartiere, 2013; Calder, 2014) and Bishop's for historicizing participatory art whilst critiquing

widely-made claims for its artistic and political value (Widrich, 2013; Martin, 2013; Watt, 2014) – although I

draw on more critical reviews below. Whilst Bishop and Kester's exchange was conducted in a

rather ferocious manner (at one point Kester writes that 'all that is lacking' from Bishop's critique

'are accusations of child abuse and the clubbing of baby seals' [2006: 22]); and though their

positions are generally understood as being mutually exclusive, I use this review to gesture

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with much of the theory that Kester dismisses; re-evaluating Bishop's rejection of bottom-up

collaboration; and rejecting the opposition between affirmation and negation that structures both

authors' arguments.

Despite their disagreements, a degree of common ground can be established between Kester and

Bishop from the offset, for they both position themselves as hostile to the manner in which forms of

participatory art are utilised to generate 'social inclusion': an ameliorative approach to social

problems that fails to engage with their structural causes (Bishop, 2012: 13; Kester, 2011: 198).

Thus, they both condemn Frančois Matarasso's Use or Ornament (which, published by the New Labour thinktank Comedia, has exercised considerable influence on UK cultural policy over the last

fifteen years) for the manner in which it positions participatory art as a tool to 'create...submissive

citizens who respect authority and accept the “risk” and responsibility of looking after themselves in

the face of diminished public services' (Bishop, 2012: 14); and for 'seek[ing] to acclimate the

working class to the forms of subjectivity demanded by capital, but not to question the demands

themselves.' (Kester, 2011: 198).i

The source of Kester and Bishop's disagreements can be located in the way these critiques are

developed, however. For Kester, the issue is that the projects in question do not engage with

existing conflicts and so encourage only a superficial form of engagement ('participation'), in which

the goals and methods of social change are pre-determined by the state; as opposed to a

'collaborative' approach in which they are collectively worked through from the bottom-up. Though

not made explicit, the point here is that bottom-up artistic practice – which Kester labels

'collaborative' – is to be preferred on ethical grounds to top-down artistic practice, which is labelled

as 'participatory'. The collaborator has more agency than the participant and thus, for Kester, such

work is superior.

This is a distinction that Bishop does not draw. For her, 'collaborative art' is simply another name

for 'participatory art' (1). Where Kester celebrates art that cedes autonomy to collaborators (at least

as he sees it), Bishop believes that doing so is politically limited, as it neutralizes art's capacity to

challenge social conventions; and aesthetically dubious, as it leads to uninteresting artworks that

fail to be of interest to those outside the immediate collaborative sphere. Artwork cannot be judged

on ethics alone, and if ethics is to be retained as a useful concept for political art criticism it should

entreat us to pay attention to the 'symbolic ruptures' of a given project, and 'the ideas and affects it

generates for the participants and viewers' (26). The artist's responsibility is not to minimize their

power vis-a-vis participants, but to use it to generate 'unease, discomfort...frustration...fear,

contradiction, exhilaration and absurdity' (Ibid.).

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The One and the Many's focus is on 'site-specific collaborative projects that unfold through

extended interaction and shared labor, and in which the process of participatory interaction itself is

treated as a form of creative praxis.' (9) Many of the works it engages with have occurred 'outside

of traditional art venues...and were produced in conjunction with local communities,

neighbourhoods or sites of political resistance' (Ibid.). Their popularity, says Kester, has increased

as dominant narratives cease to hold the power they once did (3, 6). Whilst it is clear that Kester is

not an uncritical supporter of all such practice, he believes it can offer a productive way of moving

beyond modernism's 'bourgeois' insistence on the power of the 'genius' to break the shackles of

conformity; and the avant-garde's faith in shock, dislocation and critical revelation, helping

'transform our perceptions of difference and...open[ing] space for forms of knowledge that

challenge cognitive, social, or political conventions.' (11)

The core of Kester's argument is developed in the Introduction, and is elaborated across three

lengthy chapters that mix readings of collaborative and participatory art with theoretical

observations. The first of these offers a description of three projects frequently returned to as

exemplars of successful collaborative practice – Park Fiction in Hamburg; Ala Plastica's AA Project

in Río de la Plata, Argentina; and Dialogue in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Park Fiction grew

out of (and worked alongisde) squatting and residential activism in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg

to successfully fight off plans for 'luxury' housing and offices on the banks of the Elbe. Claiming the

land as public space, they utilised their position as artists to instigate a participatory planning

process, which eventually lead to the space being developed as a park. Ala Plastica's AA Project

drew inspiration from pollution-absorbing reeds in the Río de la Plata basin to engage residents in

processes of spatial and cognitive mapping in order to collect local knowledges. These were used

to imagine alternatives to a proposed rail bridge, designed with the interests of capital and the state

in mind. Dialogue, meanwhile, worked with the Adivasi tribe to design a system of water pumps

providing clean water; and to create social spaces for women and children.

For Kester, these projects blur the lines between artistic practice, planning, education and political

activism; and must be judged according to a cautious, contingent criteria that blurs aesthetics with

ethics. They are pluralistic, dialogic and improvisatory, with the artists ceding considerable control

to collaborators rather than simply imposing their vision: they privilege the 'many' over the 'one'

(113); and work in the here-and-now rather than training the viewer 'for social interactions we aren't

prepared for in real life' (42). Despite privileging collaboration over individualism, however, these

projects do not subsume the desire of the individual, constituting 'a form of research into the

production of collective and individual identity' (Ibid.). Although Kester is unclear about precisely

how identities are transformed through such activity, many of his arguments here are powerful; and

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interested in alternative forms of social and political organisation would also do well to engage with

such projects.

Frustratingly, however, Kester's analysis lacks engagement with those who collaborated on these

projects. What worked for them? What criteria are used in evaluating what 'worked' (ethical,

aesthetic, political, practical, etc.)? What lessons could be taken forwards for future practice? How

did collaborators experience their 'collective and individual' identities, and did these change during

the project? Without such reflection, the efficacy of such projects to those who did not experience

them first-hand is severely limited. Its absence also prompts questions about Kester's celebratory

accounts, which rarely engage with failures or difficulties these projects ran into: a vital – and often

revealing – task. Furthermore, there is a lack of reflection on the privileges and powers enjoyed by

the artists in these projects: simply asserting that they work collaboratively is insufficient, and it

would be interesting to know how – if at all – artists undercut their various privileges vis a vis their

collaborators (cf. Kenning, 2009; Francis, 2013: 6; Charnley, 2011: 48).

Kester opposes these collaborative projects to textual forms of artistic production, in which the

artist retains autonomy from social interaction and produces a painting, installation or event (the

'text') to be displayed in a gallery (and here Kester includes much nominally participatory work). In

such works, the 'one' (the artist) is privileged over the 'many' and the world 'becomes an extension

of the artist's suum, a kind of reservoir from which he or she may draw at will in elaborating his or

her particular vision' (114). Kester claims that the production and framing of these textual works is

governed by a 'quasi-hegemonic' discourse drawn from 'post-structuralism', which fetishises the

'rupturing' of the viewer's self, and of the viewer's relationship to dominant culture (48, 111). Art is

thus taken to have a negative function, although – correctly – Kester argues that this often ends up

'reinforcing a particular sense of identity among art world viewers (as liberal-minded risk takers)'

(35, cf. 63). Drawing on the work of the late Eve Kofosky Sedgwick, Kester argues that this

approach to art draws on the 'paranoid consensus' of marxism, structuralism and psychoanalysis,

with their obsessive drives to 'expose' power relations rather than seek to build positive alternatives

within the present. He also draws on Paul Starr to lambast 'post-68' politics for refusing to

compromise with impure power structures, apparently preferring to wait until after a radical

overhaul of society before taking steps to improve the conditions of daily life and beating a retreat

into the privileged world of textual production in the meantime (45-46).

Kester's argument is much less convincing here, and as it is developed he lumps marxism,

psychoanalysis, 'post-68 politics', 'continental philosophy', structuralism and post-structuralism into

one singularly ill-tempered pot. There are, of course, commonalities between these approaches;

but it is debatable whether any one of them is a coherent enough category to be mobilised in the

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number of highly questionable – and sometimes bizarre – claims. A small sample of these includes

assertions that Alain Badiou is a post-structuralist (54); that post-structuralists exhibit an 'extreme

scepticism about organized political action' (54, cf. 121); and that Hardt and Negri refuse to

consider any engagement with current political structures (120-121). At best, such claims are gross

simplifications; at worst, they are demonstrably wrong.ii

This is frustrating because many of these approaches resonate with – or could enhance – his own

framework. Post-structuralism's attention to the specificities of power, its emphasis on working from

the bottom-up (whilst globally networking site-specific groups), and its privileging of the contingent

over the certain would have much to offer his readings of AA Project and Park Fiction in particular.iii

Meanwhile, autonomist marxists' readings of Spinoza's concept of the 'multitude' provide tools for

re-reading the relationship between the 'one' and the 'many' in a manner that resonates with

Kester's postition (Hardt and Negri, 2005; Virno, 2004; Gilbert, 2013).iv Likewise, their sympathy for

prefigurative forms of political organisation overlaps with Kester's position, but is vastly

strengthened through their commitment to structural critique (Eden, 2012). Most crucially for the

argument I make below, however, is Kester's claim that accepting the impossibility of

communicative exchanges operating free from conflict leads to political paralysis or aesthetic

deferral to an idealised future (a belief that perhaps animates his failure to satisfactorily interrogate

the power relationships between artists and collaborators) (46-47; 223). Far from this being the

case, such an acceptance can lead to precisely the form of collective and individual reflection that

Kester believes these projects encourage; and often functions as a driving force for activist practice

(Trott, 2014).

Kester's lack of consideration with the praxes that he claims that collaborative art blurs with is also

to be regretted. Social movements, activists, educators, NGOs and planners have all engaged with

forms of bottom-up collaboration and participation (and often involve artistic practice – participatory

or otherwise – in their praxis); and there is a considerable amount of literature reflecting on, for

example, the relationship between project leaders and participants; and 'expert' and local

knowledges – many of which draw on the post-structuralist and marxist traditions that Kester is so

quick to critique (anarchism, subaltern studies, and feminism are also important influencesv).

Informed by these engagements, such work frequently offers in-depth analyses of the tensions and

power relations that such groups internally contend with (see, for example, Hickey and Mohan,

eds. 2004 for debates around participation in global development; or Maeckelbergh, 2012 on the

role of conflict in the Spanish 15M protest movement). Engaging with such work also calls into

question Kester's claim that collaborative art differentiates itself from these 'quotidian' forms of

collaboration through self-reflection and a focus on the inherent creativity of exchange, as this is

precisely what many of them do. Thus, questions must be asked about precisely what is artistic

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Artificial Hells

Artificial Hells' opening chapter is a revision of her Artforum essay 'The Social Turn: Collaboration

and its Discontents' and is – by Bishop's own admission – something of a polemic. In it she

'appeals for more bold, affective and troubling forms of participatory art and criticism' (7), believing

critics such as Kester to venerate a cosy form of artistic practice that reproduces the logics of

'social inclusion' rather than challenging the structural causes of exclusion. While Kester claims

that art discourse centres on the power of the individual artist to rupture the sensibilities of the

viewer, Bishop laments a turn to shallow and facile talk of consensual 'community' and the

denigration of the individual producer, as if this is enough to distance artworks (and artists) from

neoliberalism (12-20). In this discourse, she believes, talk of 'aesthetics' and 'quality' are shunned

for fear of appearing elitist, with the result that value judgements – necessary for political

orientation – are disavowed (8); and that participatory art becomes of little interest to 'spectators' –

those who encounter the work through documentation rather than as a participant. Thus, 'art enters

a realm of useful, ameliorative and ultimately modest gestures, rather than the creation of singular

acts that leave behind them a troubling wake.' (23) Park Fiction is not mentioned, but one can

easily imagine the critique being applied here: attractive though its park is, it is an undeniably

'modest' intervention in a city that is largely governed in the interests of capital, and – nominally, at

least – the participatory planning processes instigated by the group are similar to the 'consultations'

so beloved of contemporary governance.

Despite her critique, Bishop is not against participatory art per se, but insists that participation

should not be the be-all-and-end-all of artistic practice. Rather, it should function a means for

exploring discomfort, dissensus and antagonism – a constant call to arms against the stagnant

status quo (whether capitalist or otherwise). Throughout the rest of the book, she analyses

participatory art practices from 1917 onwards – from Bolshevik Proletkult's commitment to mass

spectacle to contemporary 'relational aesthetics', with its emphasis on in-gallery participation as a

way to create temporary, 'microtopian' spaces. Along the way she engages with Latin American

performance theatre, the British Community Arts tradition, artistic practice in the Eastern Bloc and

more besides – certainly much more than can be productively engaged with in the space of this

review. Music even makes a brief appearance, with Bishop discussing the work of Persimfans – a

conductorless orchestra active in the Soviet Union in the 1920s – and Arsenii Avraamov's 'hooter

symphonies', composed for the sirens, hooters, whistles, guns and horns of Soviet cities.vi These

are 'clustered' around three historical moments: the 'collective' moment of 1917, the

existentially-informed critique of alienation and authority that surfaced in 1968, and a turn to 'identity' and

'community' following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Bishop's argument is not so much

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cataclysmic changes embodied in them (and, indeed, was part of them).

Bishop's commitment to negation and disruption does not mean that she lacks contextual

specificity. Whilst she is able to trace broad trends across time and space – claiming, for example,

that the privileging of immediate experience over lasting artistic significance in much of today's

participatory art discourse can be traced back to Prolekult's interventions in post-revolutionary

Russia (36) – she also negotiates the specificities of the historical situation in which each of these

forms took place. Thus, Futurism – which one might expect Bishop to laud for its apparent

disruption – is critiqued because its audience displayed such a willingness to be agitated (47);

whilst the 'consummate subtlety' of Collective Action Group (active in and around Moscow in the

late 1970s and early 1980s) is praised for the manner in which it utilised participation to provide for

the self-organization of individual desires against a stultifying bureaucratic backdrop, without

romanticising these desires as inherently liberatory (154-162).

This is not always so successful, however. Whilst Bishop is right to critique the apolitical nature of

much community art (and the manner in which it has functioned as an unofficial extension of – or

replacement for – the welfare state), her lament that the field as a whole is insufficiently disruptive

for fear of alienating participants fails to take into account the power relations between the artist

(more than often white, and from a relatively privileged background) trying to 'disrupt' the

sensibilities of 'underprivileged collaborators' (190). Whilst disruption should not be discounted as

an artistic strategy, it must occur within a framework of responsibility towards the communities in

which one is engaging (particularly when they are already 'disrupted' by the effects of poverty,

gentrification, police harassment, etc.). This responsibility may take the form of Kesterian

collaboration (though clearly artists can also act responsibly without ceding their power), although

– as I note below – this itself may involve disruption. This issue re-iterates the importance of engaging with the experiences of collaborators or participants in art projects, something Bishop –

like Kester – fails to do (Francis, 2013: 6).

A further problem stems from the fact that Bishop's argument is driven by the assumption that

top-down intervention is necessary in order to inject or expose dissensus in the social field. For her,

collaboration – as Kester understands it – cannot be 'disruptive'. This is at odds with her discussion

of critical pedagogy in Chapter Nine, which she presents as a form achieving the right balance of

shock and participation, and thus something that participatory artists should look to learn from. Yet

critical pedagogy – as she notes (267) – is built on increasing the agency of the student in relation

to the educator, in order that the curriculum be opened up to explore the diverse experiences

present in the classroom, and the intersecting oppressions that produce them.vii The educator's

role, then, is not to introduce dissensus, but to facilitate a participatory (or 'collaborative') space,

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and the collaborative production of knowledge from these experiences (cf. Charnley's call for a

collaborative art built around dissensus, 2011).

This troubles the binary Bishop offers at the book's conclusion, in which there are two (opposed)

ways in which participatory art seeks to create 'a communal, collective space of shared social

engagement'. The first is to affirmatively create a 'utopian' space in which an alternative is

proposed; the second is to operate on more dystopian terrain by making felt the 'alienation',

'injustice' and 'illogicality' of the status quo, leading to a dialectical negation of this negation (275):

an opposition that Kester also subscribes to (albeit coming down in support of the opposite side to

Kester). Through further engagement with Park Fiction, what I now want to argue is that these two

forms are perhaps not (necessarily) so opposed as Bishop and Kester suggest.

A Synthesis? Affirmation and negation; not affirmation or negation

Park Fiction, I contend, provided both a 'utopian space' and made felt the injustice of the status

quo, although these two operations cannot be fully separated from one another (indeed, utopias

from Thomas More onwards have frequently performed this dual function of critique and

affirmation). Its utopian space emerged in the planning procedure, which took the form of an

affirmative, bottom-up process; but which – importantly – never became 'neutralized by consensus'

(Schäfer, 2004: 46-47). Not only was there a degree of antagonism internal to this utopian process,

but collaborators experienced just how hostile existing forms of governance are to such bottom-up

organisation (Kester, 209; 274-275; Schäfer, 2004: 44), very likely resulting in alienation from the

status quo (that I have to say 'very likely' here is testament to the importance of interrogating the

experiences of collaborators in such projects). Neither 'artificial' nor hellish', Park Fiction was,

nonetheless, not simply compensatory: its affirmative stance begetting the discomfort that Bishop

calls for, both within the project and in its relationship to the dominant logics with which it had to

contend.

There is, however, a problem of scale here. Although Bishop is critical of Proletkult's artistic quality,

it serves as a reminder of the scale of ambition that participation once had; and although Park

Fiction is an inspiring project, the park finds itself dwarfed by ongoing commercial developments

along Hamburg's waterfront. Whilst Kester suggests that collaborative art projects contribute 'to an

emerging mosaic of oppositional practices...both local in effect and international in scope'

(something supported by the project's renaming as Gezi Park Fiction, St. Pauli in June 2013), his

claim that '[i]n the absence of an imminent overturning of the “system”, change becomes

sustainable and extensive only through a cumulative process of reciprocal testing that moves

between practical experience and reflective insight' (212) is altogether too modest: no matter how

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capitalism – a system that most certainly does not require scare quotes, and which is more than

content to contain, oppress or recuperate such local practices. The absence of an imminent

revolution (not, of course, that revolutions can be predicted) is no reason to abandon structural

critique, and whilst there are obvious difficulties facing artists who would like to expand such

practice beyond the relatively local level (Bishop, 284),viii considering how (or perhaps if) artistic

collaboration might fulfil its dual function of affirmation and negation on a broader scale becomes

an increasingly important question.

It is here that consideration needs to be given to Bishop's 'spectators' – those who did not directly

collaborate in the production of the work but come to engage with it in other ways – in order to

consider the 'ideas and affects' the work opens up for them (although here I prefer to talk of 'those

who encounter' the work rather than 'spectators' in order to avoid occularcentricism: it is important

to account for the diversity of sensory and relational experiences through in which one may

encounter work) (cf. Siegelbaum, 2012: 217; Schwan, 2013: 255). For Park Fiction, this would

mean considering the way the park impacts on those who visit it: does it inspire them to think how

the world could be otherwise? If so, is this simply an affirmative experience or does it also

engender critique of the status quo? Do park users practice different forms of collaborative

interaction (play, picnicking, etc.) when using the park? Does the collaborative design process

make itself felt in the park; and if so, what are its strengths and weaknesses? Given that far more

people will experience the park than collaborated on its design and establishment, attending to

these questions (with their Kesterian mix of aesthetic, practical and ethical concerns) is vital if the

political efficacy of the project is to be fully considered.

Conclusion

Kester and Bishop's works are to be commended for the manner in which they go beyond a

platitudinous approach in which participation is seen as a good in and of itself. They identify that an

uncritical approach to participatory art supports – rather than challenges – the status quo, and one

of the major values of these books is their powerful critiques of the political quietism inherent to

much 'participatory' art practice. Whilst their arguments about how to move beyond this contain

many persuasive arguments, they establish an unhelpful binary between affirmation and negation.

It would be productive if future work in the field were to explore how collaborative art can

simultaneously negate the status quo and affirm an alternative, whilst paying closer attention to the

power relations between artists and their collaborators; and follow Bishop's insistence on

considering the effects of collaborative art for those who encounter its results but do not engage in

its immediately collaborative phase.ix This would ideally involve paying detailed attention to

practices that collaborative art resonates with, rather than simply asserting a commonality. There is

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collaborative art.

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Widrich, Mechtild (2013), 'Review: "Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship", caa.reviews, online at http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/1957 [accessed 13th July 2014]

i In a recent essay, Matarasso (2013) is critical of the depoliticization of socially engaged art, a shift he associates with the change in terminology from 'community art' to 'participatory art'. He makes no reference to claims he was partly responsible for this shift; nor to Use or Ornament.

ii Alain Badiou is a Maoist and is highly critical of the post-structuralist tradition (Badiou, 2012). Key post-structuralist thinkers have been involved in political organisation – and advocate it theoretically – even if it this often shuns traditional party-based forms (Gutting, 2001: 339; Guattari and Rolnik, 2008); and Hardt and Negri are often criticised by fellow communists for proposing engagement with existing political structures (Eden, 2012: 120).

iii Indeed, Park Fiction and Ala Plastica both draw on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the rhizome – Kester even quotes Ala Plastica's use of the term, twice (26, 141; cf. Schäfer, 2004: 45). Whilst this does not, of course, mean that a superior conceptual framework for their projects cannot retrospectively be constructed, the influence of Deleuze and Guattari on such projects is evidence that 'post-68 thought' does not simply lead to a refusal to engage with existing power structures; at least not the point of paralysis or retreat into textual production, as Kester suggests. Calder (2012: 131) also notes similarities between Kester's position and Deleuze's understanding of identity, although shares Kester's broader critique of Deleuze.

iv In a conversation with Rhiannon Jones in late 2014, Kester stated that he is working on a new book exploring the co-constitution of the one and the many. He explicitly mentioned Mikhail Bakhtin as a theoretical influence.

v It is interesting that Kester does not engage with these discourses, given the frequency with which they expose power relations and their influence on contemporary art discourse. Of course, it is one thing to critique largely white, male theorists for 'merely' exposing abhorrent power relations while enjoying positions of privilege, but it would be quite another to do so to people whose gender or race puts them at a structural disadvantage.

vi It is a shame – although perhaps understandable – that music does not feature more heavily in the two works, as many of the arguments made reflect the positions taken by theorists of musical improvisation, in particular. Kester's arguments resonate with prominent discourses about improvisation's affirmative potential (see, for example, Prévost, 2004); whilst Bishop's arguments recall Ben Watson, who is fiercely critical of such 'feelgood' communal accounts and argues that improvisation should be understood as an 'authentic Modern Art [that] speaks a moment of truth: controversial, nerve-wracking and critical' (2004: 254).

vii Bizarrely, Bishop cites Summerhill School as a precursor to critical pedagogy. There, the 'radicality' is concerned with the management of the school itself (with students allowed to skip lessons and involved in formulating disciplinary codes); but this does not extend to the implementation of radical curricula in the classroom. Furthermore, Summerhill's fees (currently £3,000-£5,000 a term) are anathema to a truly critical pedagogy, which must necessarily be open to the poorest members of society.

viii For example, Park Fiction's proposed 'Institute for Independent Urbanism' (intended as a more internationally focussed extension of the project) has yet to take root: as of August 2014 it had no web presence.

References

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